Science and art students alike gathered in Memorial Chapel on Thursday to hear Margaret S. Livingstone, Ph.D., Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, lecture on “What Art Can Tell Us About the Brain.”
“I try to figure out how we see by studying individual neurons,” Livingstone said. “But I admit that artists have been trying to figure out how we see a lot longer than we neurobiologists have.”
Livingstone spoke as part of the second yearlong lecture series sponsored by the Edward W. Snowdon Fund.
“I applied last year and was awarded a Snowden grant to bring some notable speakers from outside Wesleyan to deliver a series of University lectures this year in the general area of Science and Art,” said Professor of Chemistry and of the Sciences and Mathematics David Beveridge, who invited Livingstone to campus. “This is intended to be an enrichment to CHEM 348: Science and Art and to inform the Wesleyan Community about interesting things going on in this interdisciplinary area.”
Livingstone said that artists’ fundamental findings about vision are illustrated in works as early as cave drawings. Prehistoric humans realized that contours can be represented by lines. Today, modern scientists know that lines are more preliminary than colors in visual processing.
“Your visual system doesn’t care about how much light there is at any one time,” Livingstone said.
Livingstone used the example of line perception versus color perception to disprove what she considers a common misconception of the visual system.
“Vision is information processing, not image transmission,” she said. “It doesn’t do you any good to send an image up to the brain. [The visual system] is transmitting information from the world that we can act on.”
Livingstone said that colors are second also to luminance, which is brightness or reflectiveness. She offered as an example black and white photographs. Although they do not contain colors beyond the black, white, and grey spectrum, such photographs make visual sense to observers because they portray contours, illuminated areas, and shadowed areas. French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) offers another illustration of luminance, Livingstone said. He painted shadows with such nontraditional colors as green and blue, but because he painted them to the correct luminance, they appear to have accurate depth.
According to art historians, Livingstone said, 15th-century artist Leonardo DaVinci was the first to correctly use luminance. Twentieth-century painter Pablo Picasso is also credited with the skillful use of luminance in his works.
“’Colors are only symbols. Reality is to be found in luminance alone,’” Livingstone quoted Picasso.
Livingstone discussed how not only artists but also advertisers consider the biology of vision in their works. Advertisers often print the words in an ad at a similar or equal luminance to that of the background. The subsequent low contrast between foreground and background causes printed words to appear to move.
“The jumpy quality is attention-getting,” she said.
Also known as equiluminance, this forces the reader to slow down and pay more attention to the advertisement, Livingstone said.
Similarly, Livingstone said television broadcasters spend more money to transmit a variety of luminances than colors.
“The television industry knows that your color resolution is low and that your color acuity [or sharpness] is low,” she said.
Livingstone said that the rough perception of color is well illustrated by DaVinci’s famous oil painting, the Mona Lisa. Livingstone recalled the lesson in science that she learned from DaVinci’s masterpiece.
It was obvious that I knew a lot about vision, but it was [also] obvious that I knew nothing about art history,“ she said.
Peripheral color vision, Livingstone said, may partly account for the Mona Lisa’s fascination as an artwork. When an observer looks at the figure’s eyes, her unfocused mouth appears to be turned up in a smile. When the observer looks at the mouth, however, the smile seems to slighten.
”She’s smiling behind your back,“ Livingstone teased the audience.
The discrepancy between contours and luminance from color can be explained by subdivisions in visual perception within the brain, which Livingstone termed the What System and the Where System. The What System controls object recognition, face recognition, and color perception.
The Where System, which is colorblind, controls motion perception, depth perception, spatial organization, and figure-ground segregation. The brain perceives depth and distance, thereby making a three-dimensional world of two-dimensional images, through relative motion, shading, perspective, and stereopsis.
Stereopsis resolves the slightly different vantage points from which the two eyes see. It accounts for the visual system’s acuity in perceiving depth and distance.
”When you’re born, your visual system has to wire-up stereopsis,“ Livingstone said. ”If the eyes are not perfectly lined up, this is difficult.“
Faulty stereopsis is one of the causes of dyslexia, a learning disability marked by trouble with reading and writing despite normal intellectual development.
”[Dyslexia is the] selective slowing-down of the Where System,“ Livingstone said.
Livingstone listed numerous artists, musicians, and actors who are documented dyslexics, including Picasso, a painter, printmaker Frank Stella, and painter Andrew Wyeth. These individuals are less able than non-dyslexics to translate two-dimensional images into preconceived three-dimensional images.
”If you look at how talented some of these people are, you think maybe there’s something with being dyslexic that makes you more artistic,“ she said. ”Maybe trouble gauging distance and depth is an asset.“
Those in attendence enjoyed Livingstone’s interactive slide presentation, which included numerous visual illusions.
”Attending [the] lecture was a really great opportunity to see the connections between the science of neurobiology and art,“ said Johanna Goetzel ’07. ”Her interactive approach (including stereoscopic glasses) localized her discussion and took away much of the abstraction that people associate with the process of viewing.“
”I found the information very accessible, and I have limited knowledge of neurobiology,“ said Amanda Sim ’08. ”I find it fascinating and immensely useful to be able to connect the arts and sciences. I think the relationship between the two fields are often overlooked or taken for granted.“
”The primary purpose of the Snowdon Lectures is to expand, enrich, and enliven intellectual exchange among the various members of the Wesleyan community, including alumni/ae and friends,“ reads the series website. ”Snowdon events should challenge participants to think in new ways, and foster the intellectual evolution of the academic community.“
Beveridge found Livingstone’s presentation to be a strong contribution to the series.
”Part of a liberal education at a place like Wes is not only to ‘learn things’ but to be exposed to and have the chance to interact with creative people who are making outstanding contributions to their area of endeavor,“ he said. ”Moreover it is an education in itself to see the enthusiasm that a first rate scholar invests in their work, and Marge was a great example. All students in Wes-world will sooner or later be facing issues like that, and we feel it is valuable to have some exposure to diverse perspectives on this.“
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